The Fresh Worship of Bloom
12-21-2007
by Kevan Breitinger

Michael Gungor’s start in ministry began like most others. The son of a pastor and a worship leader, he literally grew up praising God in the church. His own worship leading experience began back in high school, and following time at Oral Roberts, North Texas, and Western Michigan Universities, he ended up at an early age leading worship at Resurrection Life Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a season he still appreciates.

“The typical mega church system was a great place to be formed,” he shares. “We met some great people there. But after a while it came to a point where my wife and I began to dream of doing church a different way. Our understanding of what church could be had changed. It started when I read Sally Morgenthaler’s “Worship Evangelism.” That was the first time I started wondering what a service would be like when driven by a worship leader.”

“I had lead services at Resurrection Life Church from the position of worship leader, and it led to a very different feel from what I had become familiar with in the church, where the music is only the prelude to the main course.” Michael laughs while describing the underlying attitudes of some churches as, “Yeah, that’s nice. Just sing your songs so we can get to the Word.” It’s difficult not to see the truth in his observation.

“I write from a Word-based place myself, a theological place where I’m very intentional about the words we’re singing. Most of the songs on my new CD (All I Need Is Here) were written for services I was leading as a worship leader,” he adds. “And what I found is that I started pastoring with music. Sometimes the service format would change, and we’d end up diving into what we were actually singing. So the Spirit created this unity between the preaching and the worship experience.” Michael’s excitement is obvious as he concludes, “So the whole thing was worship, and the whole thing was preaching. It really even affected the way that I was writing.”

Thus were born the seeds of what has come to be called Bloom, Gungor’s series of outreach events in his new home in Denver, Colorado. Feeling the call to explore more of what the church could be, Michael and his wife pianist/singer Lisa moved to Denver last summer, where they knew no one. Their only plan was to build relationships slowly and to encourage the body of Christ in that city. “We wanted to take it all slowly, to see what God would do,” Michael shares. “So our first step this summer was to start monthly worship events as a service to the city, to remind us that we’re all on the same team. We thought, if the church in Denver knows who her God is, then Denver will be a better place. So we simply offered free nights of worship, with no offering taken. Every night was kind of structured around a different attribute of God: the God of love, the God of justice, the God of beauty. And a great energy just started happening,” he continues. “So eventually we started meeting in our house, on nights when no Bloom events were planned. Basically, we’re just trying to figure out what it means to live out our faith as the church.”

The evenings of worship and teaching are meant to bring the community together for a greater purpose. “How can we become more effective in equipping the Body of Christ to be the Body of Christ in the world, to live like the real church rather than one centralized structure?” he asks. “We hope Bloom can be a way for people who are a part of different Christian communities around the area to come together to equip, celebrate, and synergize with what God is doing in the area.”

  “We’re just trying to take it step by step and make every step purposeful, driven by God and not just by our desire to do something. With every gathering, our end goal isn’t just to play our songs. It’s to experience the love of God, perhaps see who He is more clearly and discover ourselves more clearly in Him.”

Michael’s lifelong familiarity with the Christian worship scene enables him to pass along this story, told to him by good friend Israel Houghton. God showed him the dark underbelly of the worshipping church one day right in the middle of an on-fire charismatic worship service. As the people prayed, ‘Come, Lord Jesus,’ Israel felt the rebuke of the Spirit, asking him, ‘where do you think I am? Do you think I want inside the church walls? No, I’m out here with the oppressed and the hurting and the poor.’ Michael’s desire, and the motivation behind the Bloom services, is to get out from under our self-centered tendencies, and to be world-changers.

“If the end result isn’t that people have clean drinking water, and homes aren’t built for the poor, and marriages in Denver aren’t restored, then it isn’t worship,” he declares. “We’ve missed the point. We try to find avenues for everybody to get more involved in the community, whether it’s packing shoes for World Vision or going downtown to the Denver Rescue Mission.”

“In the past, it seemed like people who were concerned about social justice issues were over here on the left hand, and people concerned about worshipping God were over here on the right. Those two polar positions don’t make sense to me,” says Michael. “We’re purposely trying to tap into both. Salvation isn’t about making converts but about making people into the hands and feet of God, to do the works prepared in advance for us to do. We try to find specific ways to serve others, but it’s still worship.”

Michael brings it down to a personal level in closing. “We went down to the Rescue Mission last week and served in worship. But this week we remind ourselves, ‘we’re not worshipping the poor. We’re worshiping the God whose face we see in the poor.” Michael Gungor and the Bloom team seem to have tapped into the same wind of God that is sweeping across the American church now, calling us further into service, and worship of a different kind. For more information on Gungor and the Bloom meetings in Denver, visit www.michaelgungor.com.